The remarkable Etel Adnan, who excels as a visual artist, and equally as a writer, is 93 years old. On September 1, 2018, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opened an exhibition of her artwork entitled “New Work: Etel Adnan” which will be showing through January 6, 2019.

An exhibition of new work by an artist who is 93 year old. I hope Adnan is planning on breaking the record of artist and potter Beatrice Wood, who was still working after passing her 100th birthday, and lived to be 105.

Note: this is an update of the original SHADOWLIGHT post from June, 2016.

Etel Adnan (1925 — ), poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and painter, was born in Beirut, Lebanon, the daughter of a Greek Christian mother and a Syrian Muslim father. Her languages are Greek, French, English and Arabic. Much of her writing is in French and English.

In an interview with Lisa Robertson, Etel Adnan recalls her childhood, and her life-long fascination with light:

“I was an only child. I didn’t have brothers and sisters to play with, so the light coming in through the window was a great event for me. I played with that instead of playing with other children. It was my companion. Beirut is a very sunny city and there were very few cars when I grew up. That was a blessing, because there were people in the street. I remember trying to walk on my shadow. Shadows and light were two strong entities.”

“We owe life to the existence of the sun; therefore light is a very profound part of our makeup. It’s spiritual, in the way that even DNA is spiritual. What we call “spirit” is energy. It’s the definition of life, in one sense. Light, as an object, as a phenomenon, is magnificent. I am talking to you and the light coming in through the window has already changed. You go on the street and you look at the sky and it tells you what time it is. We are dealing with it constantly, and obscurity is also maybe its own light, because it shows you things. Obscurity is not lack of light. It is a different manifestation of light. It has its own illumination.”

After attending the Ecole Supérieure de Lettres de Beyrouth, she studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard University in the 1950s. Adnan taught philosophy at Dominican College, now named Dominican University of California (1958-1972).

During the Algerian war of independence (1954-1962) she had decided to stop writing in French, and took up painting. In response to the Vietnam War in the 1960s, she began writing poetry again, but in English.

In 1972, she moved back to Beirut and worked as cultural editor for two daily newspapers—first forAl Safa, then forL’Orient le Jour. She stayed in Lebanon until 1976, then returned to California, making Sausalito her home for some time, but with frequent stays in Paris.

Now in her 90s, Adnan still paints and writes. Her abstract paintings recently brought her late-in-life popularity in Europe. Adnan remains an outspoken feminist, member of the LGBT community, and opponent to oppression and violence. She lives in Paris with her partner, artist and writer Simone Fattal, who translated Adnan’s best-known novel, Sitt Marie Rose,into English.

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The struggle of Palestinian/Arab forces during the first years of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) inspired Adnan’s long poem, The Arab Apocalypse. Her searing imagery continues to reverberate in the continuing conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. Here are three selections from The Arab Apocalypse:

XXXVI (36)

In the dark irritation of the eyes there is a snake hidingIn the exhalations of Americans there is a crumbling empireIn the foul waters of the rivers there are PalestiniansOUT OUT of its borders pain has a leash on its neckIn the wheat stalks there are insects vaccinated against breadIn the Arabian boats there are sharks shaken with laughterIn the camel’s belly there are blind highwaysOUT OUT of TIME there is spring’s shattered hopeIn the deluge on our plains there are no rains but stones

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XXXIX (39)

When the living rot on the bodies of the deadWhen the combatants’ teeth become knivesWhen words lose their meaning and become arsenicWhen the aggressors’ nails become clawsWhen old friends hurry to join the carnageWhen the victors’ eyes become live shellsWhen clergymen pick up the hammer and crucifyWhen officials open the door to the enemyWhen the mountain peoples’ feet weigh like elephantsWhen roses grow only in cemeteriesWhen they eat the Palestinian’s liver before he’s even deadWhen the sun itself has no other purpose than being a shroudthe human tide moves on . . .

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XLIV (44)

Where do you want ghosts to reside?In our wakeful hours there are flowers which produce nightmaresWe burned continents of silence the future of nationsthe breathing of the fighters got thicker became like oxen’sthere is in that breath sparkles of scorched flesh and the fainting of starswe crucify Gilgamesh on a TANK Viking II reaches MarsImam Ali dances over a nuclear blastcursed are the clouds which repel watercursed are the Arabs who fell tall and haggard eucalyptus trees

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Etel Adnan writes:

“Do I feel exiled? Yes I do. But it goes back so far, it lasted so long, that it became my own nature, and I can’t say I suffer too often from it. There are moments when I am even happy about it. A poet is, above all, human nature at its purest. That’s why a poet is as human as a cat is a cat or a cherry tree is a cherry tree. Everything else comes “after.” Everything else matters, but also sometimes does not matter. Poets are deeply rooted in language and they transcend language.”

“Love in all its forms is the most important matter that we will ever face, but also the most dangerous, the most unpredictable, the most maddening. But it is also the only salvation I know of.”

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from Surge:

A long night I spentthinking that reality was the storyof the human species

the vanquished search for the vanquished

Sounds come by, ruffling my soul

I sense space’s elasticity,go on reading the books she wrote on thewars she’s seen

Why do seasons who regularly followtheir appointed time, deny their kind of energyto us?

why is winter followed by a fewmore days of winter?

We came to transmit the shimmeringfrom which we came; to name it

we deal with a permanent voyage,the becoming of that which itself hadbecome

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About wordcloud9

Nona Blyth Cloud has lived and worked in the Los Angeles area for the past 45 years, spending much of that time commuting on the 405 Freeway. After Hollywood failed to appreciate her genius for acting and directing, she began a second career managing non-profits, from which she has retired.
Nona has now resumed writing whatever comes into her head, instead of reports and pleas for funding. She lives in a small house overrun by books with her wonderful husband and a bewildered Border Collie.